Pap-pap loved him some Burgundy Peaches

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He could pare a peach and keep the skin in a single piece.Pap-pap, as my kids called him, or Grandpa, as me and my sisters called him, was Alfred Spory. Grandma Evelyn and Al were quite a pair and they loved canning peaches. My kids only got to do it a few times before Pap-pap passed away, but what fun times they were.
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Maple Lawn Farms

Burgundy Peach Weekend:

Hey,

Pap-pap preferred Burgundy peaches. Because Burgundy peaches resist browning when you cut’em, which means you have more time to get them in a can, and this is Burgundy Peach Weekend.

This is always the week I think of Pap-pap and those canned peaches. Mason jars stacked neatly with peaches magically levitating off the glass bottom.

If you’d like memories like that, this is your week. Burgundy Peaches are in for this weekend and they ALWAYS sell out.

Here’s the game plan:

  1. Get a friend – Many hands make light the work, as Grandmother Mabel used to say.
  2. Stage the home with good counter top space.
  3. Get to the farm.
  4. Pick 2-4 baskets per family / couple.
  5. Sample a juicy peach in the orchard.
  6. Head back to the home with the counters.
  7. Turn on some music, relax, talk, share, pare and prepare the peaches.
  8. Can like crazy…

…and in ONE DAY, you can have peaches to last the winter!

I know ‘people don’t can anymore’, but since when did we tell our children to be like everybody else?!

Be a rebel. Can some peaches with your friends, dang it. Pap-pap would have loved to help. He loved him some Burgundy Peaches 🙂

See you at the farm,

Farmer Hugh

PS Need a tutorial?[CLICK HERE] Watch this video (you can tell this guy just loves peaches:-), it’s close to the way we did it with Pap-pap. Pap-pap really liked to dice the peaches for 3/4 of our canning, then do a few peach halves at the end. Enjoy!

PPS Note we DO NOT cook the peaches before paring – Keep it FRESH! Many videos online show pre-cooking, but just use tree-ripened peaches and you don’t need to pre-cook them.

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Maple Lawn Farms – “The Summer Symphony”

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Life on the Farm – “The Summer Symphony”

Hey,

The Peach Seasons of my youth were a melange of sights, sounds and smells. From age 5, I put boxes on the ‘filler’ that would gently fill the boxes with graded, sized peaches, then push one box through with the empty box I’d just placed on the machine and repeat the process, tens of thousands of times.

It was a cacophony I can still hear in my mind today, the smell of water-cooled peaches, propane from the forklift, clanging metal parts, air compressors powering fillers, workers chattering over the equipment. It was an industrial dance, a symphony of activity.

It was also hard work. It was hard work done under the relentless deadline of ever-ripening fruit threatening to become worthless the second it got too soft to sell. Weather, slow picking crews, late hours, it was a pressure-cooker of stress through which my parents managed to raised three kids, seldom get frustrated with each other and pilot our small farm forward.

The Summer Symphony. Things are different now, but somehow remain the same. The peach packing house once silenced by our farm’s lack of size, now clangs and squeaks its motors to sort peaches into our juice press for our winery and others. Picking crews send in wagons of crates for hand sorting to send to auctions and other farm markets. Peach deliveries and juice delivery trucks roll out. Corn trucks are loaded, 2-5 a day, preparing room for this year’s crop.

Pick-your-own guests harvest perfect peaches straight from the trees in record numbers. Day camps take field trips to the Maize Quest Corn Maze & Fun Park. Wine tastings bustle each weekend. Bakery treats emerge from the ovens.

Yesterday was a pressure cooker kind of day. Michelle booking groups. Matt ordering winery supplies. The team at the maze starting and serving 3 different groups and 3 different times. Dad moving wagons and crews to and from each peach block. Charles pressing juice. Rocky forklifting. Frank driving truck and tractor.

Peaches ripening, deadlines looming. Fruit to guests. Fruit to wholesale customers. Juice to wineries.

The instruments have changed, but the symphony plays on. Each movement, each season different; the music of summer harvest continues.

The fleeting magic of juicy, sun-ripened freestone peaches lasts but a little while before Fall.

Two big peach picking weekends remain. Will you to join our merry band?

See you soon at the farm,

Farmer Hugh